Convergence among EU regions, 1990–2001

This article focuses on convergence in terms of output per working age person across regions in the European Union for the period 1990–2001. Controlling for the quality of national institutions, the authors investigate whether the status of “objective 1” region improves the speed of convergence as compared to what would be expected given the regions' initial conditions. They find evidence of conditional convergence among EU regions, with the quality of national institutions having a positive impact, but no evidence of a correlation between eligibility for objective 1 and faster convergence.     

EU‐China Collaboration in the Reform of the International Monetary System: Much Ado About Nothing?

The global financial crisis has shown that the current international monetary system (IMS) suffers from an inherent flaw: it depends on US current account deficits for the provision of global liquidity. Under this arrangement, peripheral countries have to accept periodically the debasement of the US dollar. Thus, there are some mutual incentives for the EU and China to reform the current IMS through cooperation. Both are in favour of stable exchange rates, and both are keen to constrain US macroeconomic profligacy. There have been some efforts towards these objectives in the past, especially during the French presidency of the G20 in 2011. However, there has been no significant progress. On the European side, there is not a united and independent Europe which could act as the primary agent of reform. On the Chinese side, Beijing does not see Europe as a reliable partner because the latter is deemed to have a major vested interest in the current regime. As a result, the French government failed to focus the world's attention on the reform of the IMS during G20 Cannes Summit, and the Chinese government has chosen a more unilateral way to internationalise its own currency.     

Cross-border private equity syndication: Institutional context and learning

Private equity (PE) has become an increasingly international phenomenon but there is a lack of research that looks at the process by which PE firms invest across borders. We aim to fill this gap in the literature by examining the role of institutional context and organizational learning as determinants of cross-border PE syndication. We examine these issues by studying the international expansion by later-stage UK PE investors into continental Europe over the period 1990 to 2006. Our results indicate that institutional context (in terms of the number of PE firms in the local environment and the presence of investment bankers in the local market) and organizational learning (in terms of the PE firm's experience in the host country; the PE firm's multinational experience; and the number of investment managers per portfolio company; but not the presence of local offices) are significantly related to the use of cross-border syndicates. Implications for theory and practice are suggested.     

Creating an Ethical Work Context: A Pathway to Generate Social Capital in the Firm

There is a need for further research to understand how social capital in the workplace can be promoted. This article studies the generation of social capital from a comprehensive perspective that integrates ethics and general management. We propose the concept of “ethical work context” as an influential antecedent of the social capital in the firm. The ethical work context, which is aligned with the “humanizing culture” approach proposed by Melé (Journal of Business Ethics 45(1), 3–14, 2003a), allows a broader comprehension of the concrete management practices and organizational dynamics that generate organizational social capital. It is argued that social capital, understood as a by-product of the ethical work context, results both from organizational design and ongoing managerial activity. Creating an ethical work context brings ethics and social capital into the realm of the general manager; a figure that has remained absent from the social capital literature.     

Fear of Floating in Brazil: Did Inflation Targeting matter?

Brazil implemented Inflation Targeting (IT) after the breakdown of a managed floating regime, showing a similar pattern to most of the emerging markets that adopted this framework. This unplanned policy change has led to some disbelief regarding the country's commitment to its inflation objective and to a floating exchange rate. In this paper we analyse whether the adoption of IT has led to an actual shift in the country's approach to the exchange rate. We find greater exchange rate flexibility and milder interventions in the foreign exchange market after IT. We conclude that possible interventions should not be seen as Fear of Floating, but as a required policy for the attainment of the inflation targets.     

Time-to-build, monetary shocks, and aggregate fluctuations

The idea that the investment process takes time to produce finished capital goods was an integral part of Kydland and Prescott's early work on real business cycles, but this feature has been dropped in much recent work, mainly because it seemed to have little effect on macroeconomic dynamics. With a generalization of the “time-to-build” feature that incorporates multiple types of capital, however, a New Keynesian model can produce “u-shaped” responses in output, investment, and inflation to a monetary policy shock. Such responses are not found in many studies that assume no time-to-build friction. In addition, different specifications of the time-to-build structure result in substantially different response patterns for these aggregate variables.     

Applying a third party access model for China’s gas pipeline network: an independent pipeline operator and congestion rent transfer

This paper investigates third party access regulatory issues in China’s natural gas industry. We study the development of China’s gas market-oriented reform and how third party access becomes a pressing issue in that context. This paper aims to report stakeholders’ benefit and distributional effects during a hypothetical third party access process. To that end, we apply an oligopolistic equilibrium model, based on the mixed complementarity problem, to China’s gas pipeline network. We compare two scenarios: a scenario without third party access and the other scenario where an independent pipeline operator optimizes flows. This latter scenario aims to guarantee that the maximum social benefit is achieved. In addition, the latter scenario transfers the congestion rent to former integrated gas companies to compensate their actual loss control of the pipeline operation, in order to minimize the adverse distributional effects for pipeline companies. The solution of the model indicates that operational separation is feasible with Pareto improvement in China’s context. Moreover, it merits particular attention from policy makers in China that pipeline capacity scarcity should be properly evaluated and managed.